Octahedron - Area and Volume

Area and Volume

The surface area A and the volume V of a regular octahedron of edge length a are:

Thus the volume is four times that of a regular tetrahedron with the same edge length, while the surface area is twice (because we have 8 vs. 4 triangles).

If an octahedron has been stretched so that it obeys the equation:

The formula for the surface area and volume expand to become:

Additionally the inertia tensor of the stretched octahedron is:

$I = \begin{bmatrix} \frac{1}{10} m (y_m^2+z_m^2) & 0 & 0 \\ 0 & \frac{1}{10} m (x_m^2+z_m^2) & 0 \\ 0 & 0 & \frac{1}{10} m (x_m^2+y_m^2) \end{bmatrix}$

These reduce to the equations for the regular octahedron when:

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